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$1K for your signatures: Backers try to get Grand Rapids term limits proposal on city ballot

grand rapids city commission

Someone would have to fill the shoes of First Ward City Commissioner Walt Gutowski if a municipal term limit proposal gets on the November ballot and Grand Rapids voters approve it. Term limits, as proposed, would make Gutowski, seen here after winning his first city election in 2007, ineligible for re-election to a third term as commissioner in 2015. Ditto for Mayor George Heartwell and Third Ward Commissioner Elias Lumpkins. But backers of the proposal are having a hard time getting enough signatures to put it on the ballot.
(MLive.com File)

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Without enough signatures to get their proposal onto the city’s November ballot, organizers of Grand Rapids Citizens for Municipal Term Limits now are offering more than $1,000 in gift cards to people who talk to them.

Bonnie Burke and Rina Baker, a 2-time former First Ward City Commission candidate, want to ask voters to consider City Commission term limits. But they need about 6,700 valid signatures of registered city voters by late July in order for the question to make the ballot.

They plan to gather signatures 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday, May 19, at Rosa Parks Circle, and 5-6 p.m. today at John Ball Park.

“We can’t possibly find you at home at your door, talk to you as individuals and get enough signatures (by the deadline in July),” said Bonnie Burke, treasurer for the group. “We’re going to go where the people are and ask them to come to us.

“We need you to come to us. We cannot get our signatures without help.”

Struggling to get enough signatures by going door to door, the group plans to solicit signatures at city parks. People will be able to register for a drawing of more than $1,000 in gift cards to area restaurants and businesses.

• City commissioners including the mayor could serve no more than two 4-year terms (no more than one 4-year term for people who get appointed to finish more than two years of an unexpired term)

• After serving eight years as a city commissioner, someone then could serve up to eight years as mayor

• If the proposal gets on the ballot and voters approve it, then Mayor George Heartwell, First Ward City Commissioner Walt Gutowski and Third Ward City Commissioner Elias Lumpkins would be ineligible for re-election to their current positions in 2015. First Ward City Commissioner Dave Shaffer and Second Ward City Commissioner Rosalynn Bliss would be ineligible for re-election to their current positions in 2017.

Burke and Baker argue that term limits would keep city commissioners from getting entrenched in their seats, opening the door to new voices. But term limits also would push out commissioners that voters still might deem worthy of election.

The mayor and six city commissioners currently have about 45 years of combined experience in their elected positions. If term limits were implemented, the commission’s collective experience would decrease by at least one-third after the 2015 elections.

City Commission bypassed the signature-collection process by voting a streets-tax proposal onto the May 2014 ballot, a parks-tax proposal onto the November 2013 ballot and a comptroller proposal onto the November 2012 ballot. The last city proposal to make the ballot via petition signatures was a marijuana decriminalization question in November 2012.